Genesis 42:1

GOD in his wisdom hath so made the outward world, that it is a strange and wonderful picture of the inner world. Nature has an analogy with grace. The wonders that God does in the heart of man, each of them finds a parallel, a picture, a metaphor, an illustration, in the wonders which God performs in providence. It is the duty of the minister always to look for these analogies. Our Saviour did so. He is the model preacher: his preaching was made up of parables, pictures from the outer world, accommodated to teach great and mighty truths.

JACOB had reached an age in which natural vigor had gone out of him. He was getting very old and was worn and weary, yet here he seems to lead the way in providing for his family. It was he who spoke to the younger men, his sons, and urged them to go down into Egypt to buy food.

JACOB had reached an age in which natural vigor had gone out of him. He was getting very old and was worn and weary, yet here he seems to lead the way in providing for his family. It was he who spoke to the younger men, his sons, and urged them to go down into Egypt to buy food. Jacob was of a timorous disposition in his latter days—he had an old man's fear of that which is high and the grasshopper had become a burden to him—yet he proposed to his sons that they should make a venturesome journey into Egypt! It was a great undertaking for them, for they were stay-at-homes, and not travelers. They were shepherds, whose time was occupied in looking after the welfare of their flocks, and not in roaming over foreign countries. They thought it would be a burdensome responsibility and a perilous risk to cross the desert and go down into Egypt, yet Jacob proposed this to them as the only way of escape from famine and death. Here is an instance in which an aged father woke up his sons to action by telling them good news and by chiding them because of their despairing looks and words. I am going to use the passage in this way. There are many persons who are sitting down in a kind of stupor. They have no hope and, therefore, they are doing nothing at all. They need to be told the good and blessed tidings concerning salvation and to be urged to make a right use of that news and to avail themselves of the provision of which they are informed. I shall give myself, under the Holy Spirit's guidance, to the happy task of following out that line of thought under these three heads. First, despair is useless. "Why do you look, one upon another?" Secondly, hope is well-grounded. "I have heard that there is corn in Egypt." Thirdly, action is reasonable. "Get you down there, and buy for us there; that we may live, and not die." I. First, DESPAIR IS USELESS.

Jacob saw that there was corn - That is, Jacob heard from the report of others that there was plenty in Egypt. The operations of one sense, in Hebrew, are often put for those of another. Before agriculture was properly known and practiced, famines were frequent; Canaan seems to have been peculiarly vexed by them. There was one in this land in the time of Abraham, Gen 12:10; another in the days of Isaac, Gen 26:1; and now a third in the time of Jacob. To this St. Stephen alludes, Act 7:11: there was great affliction, and our fathers found no sustenance.

- Joseph and Ten of His Brethren 1. שׁבר sheber, “fragment, crumb, hence, grain.” בר bar “pure,” “winnowed,” hence, “corn” (grain). 6. שׁליט shallı̂yṭ, “ruler, governor, hence,” Sultan. Not elsewhere found in the Pentateuch. 25. כלי kelı̂y, “vessel,” here any portable article in which grain may be conveyed. שׂק śaq, “sack,” the very word which remains in our language to this day. אמתחת 'amtachath “bag.” Twenty years, the period of Joseph’s long and anxious waiting, have come to an end. The dreams of his boyhood are now at length to be fulfilled.